


Impossible to Write

by plumandfinch



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 04:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9105799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumandfinch/pseuds/plumandfinch
Summary: Dearest Ana,New York seems exactly the same; all muted tones and bustling hordes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [archwrites (Arch)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arch/gifts).



> Opened up his little heart  
> Unlocked the lock that kept it dark  
> And read a written warning  
> Saying I'm still mourning  
> Over ghosts  
> Over ghosts  
> Over ghosts  
> Over ghosts that broke my heart before I met you  
> -Ghosts, Laura Marling

> _ Dearest Ana, _
> 
> _ New York seems exactly the same; all muted tones and bustling hordes. I did see a blouse on a young woman that you would love. It was a beautiful teal color with the most delicious floral embroidery. They have this lovely new washable silk-like material and I couldn’t tell if this was that or real silk.  _
> 
> _ It stood out so, against the sea of greys and browns. Later that very afternoon, I saw an older woman with hair the same color. So there is hope after all...  _

 

> _ Dear Angie, _
> 
> _ It’s the oddest thing; nothing tastes the same. The flavors seem more potent, somehow. Sushi is terribly popular, I remember it from Japan at the end of the war but now there seems to be a sushi restaurant on every corner. Along with every other type of cuisine you would ever want to try.  _
> 
> _ I’m sticking to simple foods at the moment. I managed to find a most suitable pot roast the other evening, complete with carrots and potatoes. Nothing to soothe my craving for good pie though. I must venture out farther past my neighborhood... _

 

> _ Howard, _
> 
> _ Even though you were always a man who seemed more able to envision the future than most, there are things that even you could not have conjured in your wild imagination. I appear to have most of the world’s information at my fingertips.The device is called a tablet and it connects, via a technology I must admit to not fully understanding yet, to the internet. Which apparently houses, well, everything.  _
> 
> _ Tony says - you remember my mentioning him, of course, Anthony? Your son. - well, he says that I must start with training wheels. There’s a lot for me to learn… _

 

> _ My Dear Mr. Jarvis, _

  
  


She thinks, as she lays down her pen, that there are some things impossible to write. 

 

\--

 

The pounding in her head is interminable and has been for days. Ever since the (explosion? occurrence? incident?) transpired and she finds herself in a very strange new world. 

 

_ I am real, I am real, I am real _ . 

 

It’s what she says to keep herself sane. She runs (the clothes, like a second skin, make her feel like she can run forever), she devours books and newspapers (she can only stomach short spurts on the tablet Tony left for her), she listens as they all happen around her (he calls her Aunt Peggy).

 

_ Real, real, real _ . 

 

No one can explain how she got here. They’re only certain they don’t know how to get her back. So she runs, and she reads, and she listens. 

 

The strangest things are her hands. The face in the tidy mirror over the bathroom sink looks different, hair no longer in pert curls, lips just slightly pink. But her hands, they look exactly the same. 

 

There is a briefing, two days after the (explosion? occurrence? incident?). It is decided that it’s best if she acclimate to the world slowly. She is brisk and efficient and waits to fall apart bit by bit when she is alone and it is the middle of the night.  _ Realrealrealrealrealreal _

 

There is a psychiatrist, whom she finds distasteful and gives him the exact amount of stiff resolve he deserves. It is, however, at his suggestion that she begrudgingly begins to write letters (he uses the words “back home” as though she is merely across the continent as opposed to across the impregnable wall of time) that at least help loosen the knot in her chest.

 

_ Dearest Ana _ , she scratches over paper one night, when she can’t sleep and after that, she can’t seem to stop. 

 

-

 

They must find her something to do, she insists. 

 

“Hate to start you out in clerical, Aunt Peg,” which is said with a shrug and an excuse that contains the word ‘unprepared’. “I know you were always good at deciphering intelligence. Unless you’d rather try something different altogether.” 

 

That’s when she adds hand-to-hand combat back into her training and vows to cry over Howard only once.

 

_ Real _ .

 

\--

 

It’s a Tuesday when her world falls apart again so thoroughly. There are explosions and she is running, without thinking, after him. 

 

She had been walking back to her office, in that absurd glass building (“Best not throw stones here, one supposes” she tells Tony more than once) when the ghost of Steve Rogers appears in front of her. She is suddenly and slowly aware of a commotion in the distance and remembers how fast she can move when she is furious. 

 

She had flung the whole force of herself at his chest and a growl wrenches itself out of her throat.

 

“Who the hell are you?”

 

This man, the stranger, how dare he dress like Steve-, surely Tony would have said-, she herself watched Steve Rogers fly to his death an achingly long time ago, heard him at the last. The man is yammering something about being frozen and a feud and Barnes (Barnes?) and then, (finally, her heart says) there is something in his eyes and she runs after him without question. 

 

\--

 

It is later, much later, and in international airspace when they are just by themselves again. She is wrapped in a blanket and gingerly mopping a shallow cut in her cheek with a stinging alcohol wipe when he makes his way to the rear of the jet. 

 

“How did you know?” he asks cautiously sitting across from her looking every bit the small terrified soldier he was when she first met him. “You followed me, so something must have changed your mind.” She exhaustedly opens her mouth but what comes out, instead of words, is a sob. They don’t so much move, one to the other, but collide together in the space between the seats.

 

“Peggy,” he breathes into her hair. 

 

“I just knew,” she says into his cheek, “I knew. You looked at me just like you did when I shot you that day in Howard’s workshop.”

 

“That was a lifetime ago.”

 

She nods and tightens her arms. 

 

“You’re back,”he finally whispers. 

  
“And so are you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Steggy Secret Santa! This one is for my giftee, archwrites whose work I so enjoy - hope you like it, Arch!


End file.
